Australia: Pulses in Indian Ocean could be from a black box
April 5, 2014, 9:44 pm

Failure to find any debris or the fuselage has sparked conspiracy theories [Xinhua]

Australian searchers who have for four weeks been part of the international contingent looking for the missing Malaysian MH370 Boeing 777 appear to have confirmed that “electronic pulses” detected by a Chinese ship combing the ocean could be from an aircraft’s black box.

“I have been advised that a series of sounds have been detected by a Chinese ship in the search area. The characteristics reported are consistent with the aircraft black box,” Australian Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, head of the joint agency coordinating the operation, said in a statement late on Saturday.

Earlier, Chinese search vessel Haixun 01 said a black box detector deployed on board picked up a signal at 37.5Hz per second around 25 degrees south latitude and 101 degrees east longitude.

The signal could be the biggest lead yet for rescuers who have combed thousands of aquatic miles to find the missing plane.

Last week, investigators searching for MH370 said that there were only a few days worth of battery life left in the black box signaling system.

Meanwhile, debris found last week in the southern Indian Ocean by Australian rescue aircraft turned out to be parts of discarded fishing equipment.

So far, 10 aircraft and 10 naval vessels from Australia, New Zealand, Japan, China, South Korea, the United States and Malaysia have been combing thousands of square kilometers of water for three weeks.

57 founding members, many of them prominent US allies, will sign into creation the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank on Monday, the first major global financial instrument independent from the Bretton Woods system.

Representatives of the countries will meet in Beijing on Monday to sign an agreement of the bank, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Thursday. All the five BRICS countries are also joining the new infrastructure investment bank.

The agreement on the $100 billion AIIB will then have to be ratified by the parliaments of the founding members, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said at a daily press briefing in Beijing.

The AIIB is also the first major multilateral development bank in a generation that provides an avenue for China to strengthen its presence in the world’s fastest-growing region.